Development Cycle Archive

Wow...so in other words you intend to recreate the "race" we had yesterday? Several times in fact? Great, what a wonderful idea. Give everyone enough notice so people can request the day off from work to get their hall down in time.

DarthApothis

Please refrain from spouting your idea about coding until you've lived outside of a university and in somewhere called a "corporation" instead.

I really have no problem with having a cap at rollout especially with the apparent lag problems. It seems a good idea to me.

The way it was announced was great, even if your original plan of no announcement at all had not been spoiled by a correspondent. Trying to anticipate the dev's next moves is a big part of the game at this stage.Don't let spoilsport losers get you down.A race to place cities was a great player event, and one with a big prize!

However, it would be nice if there were an easier way to keep score, and to know whether it is worthwhile building a city hall. Would it be very hard to have some way to see how full each planet is? I would like a command like:

/citycap

That gave a report like:

"There are 10 cities allowed on this planet which has a cap of 10"

Then, at least, I could shop around for a place to put my hall, or know whether I have seen all the player cities.

This will become more important if, as I expect, you just raise the cap instead of eliminating it completely.

BTW, part of the problem came from not implementing the Urban Planner elite-elite. If city halls were well up it, only the biggest guilds would have been ready after the first few days. You might have even kept the cap from even becomming visible if some groups were slowed down enough. As it is, any two bit architect like myself is within a few days grind of a city hall.

its not that i dont under stand why it was done...but the worst part is the time freame in wich you told us...

let me tell you a story

there was this guy and a group of his friends...the were going to make a pa...they did...they decided long before even sigining up that they would make a city....so they planed...1-2 months ahead of thime the made what they could of a city near the kryat grave yard....but then the leader noticed that he had accedently placed his GUILD hall near anorthers...so what did he do?..he contacted the leader of said guild...struck a deal with them....3 other guilds came a knocking on this mans door...he negoated with the to move away..becouse it was best for all involved (and imp city within a stones throw of a rebel city isnt fun...just a clone tef war)..all agreed...two months pased...one of the 2 guilds split off in hopes that they could make thore own city....ok..thats fine...all deals and treaties intact...so the leader of guild one spends quite abit of money to get all he needs for his CITY hall....then 25 hours before the anoucment of the patch...the "cap" was placed...said leader of the guild that had worked..negoated..planed....was in perial..as soon as the leader got off work (yes some people have jobs) he camped his computer on the day of said patch...and wated...wated....wated........................(wnderhome).....wated......online!..OMFG...clicks login....wates....wates.....gets on ...RUNS ACROSS THE DESERT (about 3-4.5k)....gets trained...runs back......only to find that a guild of oposing faction placed the city hall about 500-700m away....and the cap had been hit...even if he wanted to..he would never be able to place on the spot he fought so hard to keep...all his guildmates...out of a home...the same ones that had to put up with walikng 5k just to craft or place some items down.......that leader was me...

so ....did you like my story?...im shure others have some to match...

I'm not sure this explains the resoning behind capping the most-desired planets at 10 and capping the least-desired planets at 25.

In truth, I *DO* have faith in the devs. I'm sure this was done for a reason.

At the same time, this reminds me of a movie that sells out on opening day, only the folks who could not get opening-day tickets are going to have to wait longer than just overnight to gain admission.

Maybe that's a bad metaphor, but imagine how you would feel if you had to wait an extra3 weekslonger thanthe rest of the worldto see the next Star Wars film.

I don't know what the right solution is for next time, but I think this situation should be discussed a lot before the space expansion hits. If the test server does not adequately reveal flaws, maybe future large publishes should be rolled out one server at a time to reveal bugs before all servers are affected.

That might not be practical, but I just think that there *must* be a better way to handle things than artificial caps.

I wasnt too worried about the player city limit,my PA "ORC" has grand plans for a city miles from any where on Tatooine. Altho we are a little disapointed we missed out.

But I saw a Master Architect has placed a City Hall 1000m away from Anchorhead, its there all by itself. No PA, no other houses. I think thats dam selfish to place a city hall like that. Especially when there is such a low number of player citys being allowed.

:\

Darksetz, yea I agree with what you say. However I am not a computer scientist, I only said I can read and write code (esp C, C++) I am actually a geochemist, however my cadre includes a Quantum Physicist, a Mathmatician, a graphic designer, an astrophysicist, a liquid crystal engineer, and yes a computer scientist. All I want is this stupid cap lifted so we can have our tiny town in our valley, thats it plain and simple, and I feel cheated and ignored by what the Devs do in thier releases like this. One long string of catastrophies, more worried about stupid sunglasses being sold or traded than fixing anything genuine. This make me sad and angry I cant figure out which more, its a real bummer. And yes the minor bugs should be fixed, although I understand that everytime they do any fix you will get a break on something else, but there is a point of conclusion when it all comes together if they really pull it together. Still pissed about this city thing no getting over that till its repaired.

Hurry up and make your decision guys. Why?

We have had a settlement of 40+ in the game since the second week of live, all lined up nice and neat with streets laid out, signs for the houses facing the same way, planning this for months.

These players have tolerated the bad directions this game has taken with the hopes, and even dreams, that player cities were going to be coming and put a ray of sunshine in this game of gloom.

The player city cap was hit in 14 minutes on Chilastra. Now we have a settlement of 40+ people who are talking of doing two things:

a) Many are canceling their accounts and leaving the game. This was the straw that broke the camel's back. After hardly any addition of content, a focus on creatures and yet no focus on adding in more content that actually makes this game feel like Star Wars (instead of some form of Mario Brothers), all the nerfs and yet no real fixes to professions and bugs that have been broken since beta, they cannot tolerate this anymore. Frankly, I'm almost there with them. I have a ray of hope this game can be turned around to be Star Wars again and things will start getting fixed - they don't.

b) Other's are going to leave the settlement for already established player cities. Mainly, the crafters, who are worried about their competition that are in an established city. I can't say I blame them, as they don't trust the Devs anymore to fix this kind of problem quickly, and in the correct manner. However, this ruins all of our months of planning, thanks to this little unannounced decision of yours.

So yes, make a decision on this quickly, as your answer will determine whether your traffic load on the servers goes from "Light" to "Nobody is Home".

I am glad those who are into player cities are getting their chance to make and develop these, but please don't let every planet become a Coruscant. There are already houses and buildings everywhere, I hope you strive to balance this with open spaces full of dangerous places and large explorable areas. Some of us love the out of doors. I don't mind the cities and obviously need them, but I don't want to run into buildings every five seconds in this game. Then you are no longer on the "outer rim" and in the dangerous and explorable expanding universe of SW. Which is almost always a wild and dangerous place. I hope you will bring in more planets with more variety and with even more dangerous possibilities, both from the SWG Civil War and from the rogues, smugglars, ranger, CH kind of places.

Again I am excitted that those who love the player cities are getting their chance to do this, but just becareful we don't lose the "myterious and dangerous" of space exploration and the manuvering of the Civil War.

Jolandir

Too late. You've already restricted it to an elite few in perpetuity. Pushing up the cap later means only that, once again, when you announce it, those who have no jobs, no outside lives, or those willing to sacrifice real world responsibilities to take part in a game will once again have a slim shot at placing their Hall.

Do you people even play your own game?

Hassan al-Nasir

House al-Nasir

Thanks for the update and just keep usmore informedthis time please!

One thing to think about I was thinking why not zone each planet whatI mean by that is. If you where to zone a planet and cap city features not player cities just features for ex: shuttle ports it would make groups search out new and exciting locations would help player city grows for ex: if there was two cities near each other and there was one with and one with out a shuttle port the one with would get more business more member forcing groups to plane and use more stragetic planing in placing and starting a player cityand would help group merging, in stead of all of the smaller groups everywhere,I do likesmaller groups nothing against them but would cut down on some of the problems, of to many player cities we all do not what to see! Just food for thought i think it would benfit all to cap some features but city halls no and player building no just some features!!!

Thanks Crash-Loard (boD) Master Architect

Thanks Blair for that update. My guild and I will be very happy if you make it a hot fix.

I would like to try to elevate the discussion alittle bit beyond the specifics of this and look at what has happened and what may happen from a game design point of view.

There is really nothing wrong with having a rare resource in the game. In fact, something that the players covet, that may change hands over time, and is rare due to the limits placed on it be game mechanics, is a good thing.

But it brings at least one thing along with it: Group PvP (competition) for that resource.

One of the most important aspects of PvP is that all players, or in this case, groups of players, have a level playing field.

By introducing cities with a patch in the "land rush" mode, you are bringing a real world factor, time availablity, into the competition and providing players with a appropriate time availability an unfair advantage.

On top of this, you have made the outcome uncertain by saying that there may be more cities later.

So, back to game design 101: The game should be fair to all players and the outcome should be known to the players after the competition.

Your getting paid for this, you figure itout.At least do a half a-- job eh?